Airports
We help airports fund environmental remediation by recovering funding from historical General Liability Policies tied to the insured property.
Why Airports Need Insurance Archaeology Services
For decades, airports stored jet fuel in aging tanks, trained firefighters with chemical foam, and serviced aircraft with industrial solvents, often without adequate safeguards for what those practices would leave behind. Today, the owners and operators of those properties are dealing with the consequences.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from firefighting foam, petroleum releases from aging fuel infrastructure, industrial solvents from aircraft maintenance, and glycol-based deicing compounds have all left their mark on airport properties. Contaminated stormwater runoff has spread these materials beyond their sources. The result is a complex environmental liability that spans decades of operations and now surfaces across airport properties nationwide, expanding the scope of investigation, remediation, and regulatory obligation with each new finding.
“Current owners shouldn’t have to bear the full cost of contamination they didn’t cause, and in many cases, they don’t have to.”
Before the mid-1980s, airports routinely purchased General Liability Policies to protect against operational risks. Many of those policies were issued before effective pollution exclusions became standard, meaning they may still respond to contamination tied to historical operations on the property.
When properly identified and evaluated, these historical policies can serve as a significant source of funding for environmental remediation, reducing the financial burden on current owners and operators who had no part in the practices that caused the contamination in the first place.
How Restorical Can Help
Environmental remediation can represent one of the most significant financial burdens airport owners or operators will ever face. Investigation, cleanup, and long-term monitoring costs can stretch across decades, and regulatory requirements have a way of expanding as new contamination is identified. Our role is to identify and activate historical insurance assets that can help fund these obligations before they fall entirely on those who didn’t cause them.
Find Your Policy1.
We locate and analyze historical General Liability Policies issued before effective pollution exclusions that may respond to contamination tied to airport operations.
2.
We research airport infrastructure, including hangars, fuel storage facilities, maintenance operations, and firefighter training areas, to identify past practices like chemical releases, improper disposal, and equipment failures that may trigger historical insurance coverage.
3.
We match environmental site assessments, regulatory orders, and cleanup plans to historical policies, determining which contamination events fall within coverage periods and which insurers are responsible for funding cleanup.
4.
We collaborate with environmental consultants and legal teams to prepare claim documentation, including coverage analyses, site findings, and formal notices to carriers, ensuring the historical coverage record is complete and defensible.
5.
We assist with the organization, submission, and tracking of cleanup costs to ensure available insurance funding is properly accessed and managed throughout the remediation process.
Case Studies
The following case study illustrates how Restorical has helped airport authorities identify and recover funding from historical insurance policies to address contamination tied to legacy airport operations.
